xiv, 623 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm

In a mere nineteen months, from May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that decided the course and outcome of World War II, cost the lives of millions and reshaped the course of human destiny from that point forward. How were these decisions made? What were the options facing these leaders as they saw them? What intelligence, right and wrong, did they have? What was the impact of personality, what that of larger forces? In a work with contemporary relevance, Ian Kershaw tells the connected stories of these ten fateful decisions from the shifting perspectives of the protagonists, and in so doing rescues them from the sense of inevitability that now envelops them and restores to them a feeling of vivid drama and contingency - the feeling that things could have turned out very differently indeed

Includes bibliographical references (pages 484-596) and index

London, spring 1940 : Great Britain decides to fight on -- Berlin, summer and autumn 1940 : Japan decides to seize the 'golden opportunity' -- Rome, summer and autumn 1940 : Mussolini decides to grab his share -- Washington, DC, summer 1940-spring 1941 : Roosevelt decides to lend a hand -- Moscow, spring-summer 1941 : Stalin decides he knows best -- Washington, DC, summer-autumn 1941 : Roosevelt decides to wage undeclared war -- Tokyo, autumn 1941 : Japan decides to go to war -- Berlin, autumn 1941 : Hitler decides to declare war on the United States -- Berlin/East Prussia, summer-autumn 1941 : Hitler decides to kill the Jews

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